Nolan Bushnell's image is on the Bushnell Token.
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Atari biopic producers use cryptocurrency to fund Nolan Bushnell tale

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Nolan Bushnell, cofounder of Atari, is the godfather of the video game industry, and the producers at media company Vision Tree are making a biopic about him and Atari. And they’re announcing today they are funding it through a cryptocurrency sale.

Vision Tree will sell the Bushnell Token cryptocurrency in an initial coin offering (ICO) to people who want to support the funding for the fictionalized biographical film. It’s a controversial but novel way to fund a movie about Bushnell, who became controversial recently after the Game Developers Conference rescinded its decision to give him the Pioneer Award, based on objections on grounds of sexism.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.